The present invention is related to a contact arrangement for an electrically contactable module that is arranged on a card-shaped carrier and has a contact bank including contact areas, as well as a counter-contact module.
Electrically contactable modules arranged on cardshaped carriers have been known for a long time in the form of so-called chip cards, e.g. as phone cards, Eurocheque cards, health insurance cards, or even as so-called key cards for car radios from the firm Blaupunkt-Werke GmbH. They are essentially made of at least one microchip, embedded into a plastic card of predefined dimensions, which can be designed as a memory chip and/or microprocessor chip. In the case of chip cards in accordance with the ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standard 7816-1 and following, standards the contacts of a microchip embedded in the card are connected to contact areas arranged on the top surface of the card. Thus, with the aid of counter contacts provided in a suitable chip-card reader, the module embedded in the plastic card can be contacted for the purpose of reading out its information, i.e. for the exchange of information between the module and the chip-card reader.
In the meantime, further chip cards, deviating from the ISO 7816-1 standard and following, have become known, e.g. in the form of the multi-media-card (MMC) of the Siemens firm. These differ from those according to ISO 7816-1 and following,,due to their arrangement of the contact areas which is different from the contact arrangement stipulated in ISO 7816-2.
Furthermore, counter-contact modules for use in chip-card readers are known which, because of their arrangement of the counter contacts, are suitable for the evaluation of chip cards according to the ISO 7816 standard.
The present invention relates to a contact arrangement for an electrically contactable module, arranged on a card-shaped carrier, having a first contact bank with a plurality of contact areas of which at least one is disposed outside of a predefined region. According to the present invention, the contact arrangement has the distinctions that a second contact bank having at least one contact area is provided within a predefined region, and that contact areas of the first contact bank which are arranged outside of the predefined region are in each case electrically connected to contact areas of the second contact bank.
The contact arrangement of the present invention has the advantage that even those electrically contactable modules whose contact arrangement differs from a predefined contact-area arrangement are easily adaptable to the predefined contact-area arrangement. Thus, such modules of standard evaluation units which are adjusted to the predefined contact-area arrangement are contactable, as well.
In particular, the present invention allows, for example, the contacting and evaluation of or communication with the indicated multi-media card by a chip-card reader provided for chip cards according to the standard ISO 7816-1 and following standards.
In addition, the present invention renders possible the contacting of the indicated multi-media card both with an ISO 7816 chip-card reader and with a chip-card reader provided for multi-media cards, since the present invention permits the adaptation of the contact areas of the MMC card to the ISO 7816 standard, while retaining the MMC contact-area arrangement.
A counter-contact module according to the present invention is advantageously designed for contacting a contact arrangement of the present invention, using a corresponding arrangement of the module""s counter contacts.
Such a counter-contact module can easily be produced from a conventional counter-contact module for contacting, for example, ISO7816 contact arrangements, by stringing on a further counter-contact submodule. A dovetailed groove recessed into a side wall of the counter-contact submodule, as well as a dovetailed tongue premolded onto a corresponding opposite side wall of the further counter-contact submodule to be added on represent an advantageous construction of means for cascading the counter-contact submodules. Locating pins which are premolded on a side wall of the counter-contact submodule, thus, of an ISO 7816 counter-contact module, for example, and which engage with locating bore holes in an opposite side wall of the counter-contact submodule to be added on, represent further advantageous stringing means. They permit precise alignment of the top surfaces of the submodules, so that they are in alignment with each other, and the counter contacts lie in a plane parallel to the top surface. At least one locking hook which is arranged on the top side and/or the bottom side of the counter-contact submodule, and which engages with at least one corresponding recess in the top side and/or bottom side of an attached further counter-contact submodule makes it possible to fix in position and stabilize a counter-contact module composed of counter-contact submodules, and thus the position of the contact rows and contact clearances relative to each other.
Means arranged on the top side of a counter-contact submodule, e.g. in the form of detent hooks, in conjunction with detents for the latchtype assembly of counter-contact elements, permit easy retrofit capability of individual counter-contact elements, accompanied at the same time by reliable and positionally accurate fixation of the counter-contact elements utilized.